Effect of Altitude on Athletic Performance

Abstract

Thirty national level female fencers were studied with the Cattell 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire and the Edwards Personal Preference Study to determine if there were distinct personality traits characteristic of champion level female fencers and if there was any correlation between personality traits and level of achievement in the 1968 National Championship. A definite fencer's personality emerged when they were compared with the national norms. In general, the competitive fencer may he described as a very reserved, self-sufficient, autonomous individual with a below-average desire for affiliation and nurturance. She has a strong need to be the very best and is an intelligent, creative, experimenting, and imaginative person. She also tends to be assertive and aggressive. An analysis of variance revealed that only one personality factor would differentiate levels of achievement. The top level competitor was significantly more dominating than the low level competitor.     

Towards teaching analytics: a contextual model for analysis of students’ evaluation of teaching through text mining and machine learning classification

Education and Information Technologies - Recent trends in educational technology have led to emergence of methods such as teaching analytics (TA) in understanding and management of the...     

Parental Perspectives on Children’s School Readiness: An Ethnographic Study

Early Childhood Education Journal - School readiness is a construct used by educators and policy makers to describe a range of abilities that are beneficial for children transitioning to school....     

A real-time estimation and control scheme for induction motors based on sliding mode theory

In this paper a sliding mode position control for high-performance real-time applications of induction motors is developed. The design also incorporates a sliding mode rotor flux estimator in order to avoid the flux sensors. The proposed control scheme presents a low computational cost and therefore can be implemented easily in a real-time applications using a low cost Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The stability analysis of the observer and the controller, under parameter uncertainties and load torque disturbances, is provided using the Lyapunov stability theory. Finally simulated and experimental results show that the proposed controller with the proposed observer provides a good trajectory tracking and that this scheme is robust with respect to plant parameter variations and external load disturbances.     

Anomalous Activity Measurements of Creatine (Phospho) Kinase,CK-MB Isoenzyme in Indian Patients in the Diagnosis of Acute Coronary Syndrome

In the present study, the cause of suspected false-positive (anomalous) values for CK-MB activity, in Indian patients investigated for ACS. Total serum CK and CK-MB activity, serum Troponin I were measured and CK-MB as a percentage of the total CK activity (%CK-MB) calculated. CK-MB was also estimated using densitometry and CK-MB mass assay. Anomalous specimens were tested for the presence of CK isoenzymes. In 22 healthy subjects, 11 male and female, the %CK-MB ranged from 3.6 to 30.2. In 11 male patients, with proven ACS, the %CK-MB was from 4.0 to 17.5. The cut off for anomalous CK-MB activity values was set as >33.0%. In 35 patients with anomalies, total CK values ranged from 39 to 231 U/L, CK-MB from 30 to 161 U/L. Investigation of CK isoenzymes, showed 10 patients had a CK-BB band, 14 an intermediate band between CK-MM and CK-MB (macro-CK type 1), 7 had a cathodal band (macro-CK type 2), and 3 had a band intermediate between CK-MB and CK-BB. This later band does not seem to have been previously reported. Against the CK-MB mass assay, the activity assay showed no correlation, in 43 patients (19 M, 24 F), Pearson coefficient (R²) was 0.006. The CK-MB immunoinhibition assay is better described as measuring “non-CK-MM activity.” A %CK-MB activity >6% as a marker of ACS is not valid in our patient population. Laboratories should not use only CK-MB activity as a biochemical marker of ACS.     

Text segmentation: A topic modeling perspective

In this paper, the task of text segmentation is approached from a topic modeling perspective. We investigate the use of two unsupervised topic models, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and multinomial mixture (MM), to segment a text into semantically coherent parts. The proposed topic model based approaches consistently outperform a standard baseline method on several datasets. A major benefit of the proposed LDA based approach is that along with the segment boundaries, it outputs the topic distribution associated with each segment. This information is of potential use in applications such as segment retrieval and discourse analysis. However, the proposed approaches, especially the LDA based method, have high computational requirements. Based on an analysis of the dynamic programming (DP) algorithm typically used for segmentation, we suggest a modification to DP that dramatically speeds up the process with no loss in performance. The proposed modification to the DP algorithm is not specific to the topic models only; it is applicable to all the algorithms that use DP for the task of text segmentation.     

Temperament in the school context: a historical review

The majority of studies on temperament in the educational context originate from the Anglo-Saxon culture, where there has been an increase in research in this field over the last four decades. The objective of this paper is to contribute towards systematizing of relevant findings that have been carried out in the educational context from the field of temperament over the last decades. This is a theoretical paper, where we present relevant findings obtained in the relationship between temperament and school performance, in both academic (academic skills and performance) and social areas (social–educational adjustment in the classroom). The contribution of temperament to the school performance is important, although differences can be seen in relation to the age of the children and the contents of the curriculum. In general terms, the dimensions of temperament that have more direct relationships with the academic outcomes are adaptability and attention persistence. Also worth noting is the role of negative emotionality which has a negative relationship with children’s performance. Its incidence is much greater, however, when accompanied by low abilities of self-regulation, given the important direct effect that effortful control has on both academic achievement and school social adjustment, even when this is evaluated by different informants. We must highlight the increasing evidence of the relationships that exist between the different components of self-regulation (attentional control, inhibitory control, activation control) and negative emotionality (fear, anger) when explaining behavioural problems in the classroom.     

Parental choice,social class and market forces: the consequences of privatization of public services in education

This paper is part of a research project into parental choice, social class and market forces carried out by a team in Zaragoza (Spain). The main objective was to evaluate parents’ choice of school and the consequences this may produce in terms of social exclusion and inequality. Additionally, our aim was to determine whether certain populations, ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged groups and immigrants, are concentrated in the same schools. The methodology was ethnographic. We studied 13 private and public schools in Zaragoza, in which 40 students carried out research for 5 months, using interviews, observations and document analysis. The interviews were fully transcribed and analysed using a Straussian methodology. We found three micro‐markets, varying according to different socio‐cultural factors, that share the patterns of an ‘old and stable’ market. This kind of market does not work strictly under the rules of the marketplace, where there is tough competition between schools. However, its outcomes are similar. This ‘old and stable’ market is a mechanism of social class reproduction. The middle and upper classes go to private schools, while ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged groups and immigrants attend the public sector. The parents’ expectations, experiences and ideology play a key role in the marketplace, as well as in the several micro‐markets. Middle class families have more chances to choose a school, due to greater resources and cultural status. Among several conclusions I emphasize that a market system is not necessary for social inequalities to take place. It will occur when the possibility of choice arises. The middle class are favoured under current circumstances, while the working class are disadvantaged. What are the prospects of disadvantaged classes if a market system is developed, with full freedom of choice being promoted and no compensatory actions carried out? Everybody would have the same rights, but would everyone enjoy the same conditions or possibilities? It is possible to predict that the struggle between a public education monopoly and a market system will produce greater differences between social classes. In fact, these policies could provoke a decline of the public school in Spain.